Not to mention a fully specced out Tesla Model 3 is $80k and Model Y is now.. $90k, and the tax credits are basically gone! I remember getting a pretty well configured Model 3 for $50k after tax incentives in their first year of production.
For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k range now.. insane.
Agreed that they are expensive cars that have gotten even more expensive over the last decade.
But comparing absolute numbers for a car you bought five years ago may be misleading because the majority of the increase is likely due to inflation.
Back of the envelope math: If you were in CA and got $7.5k federal and $2.5k state credits that means the Model 3 you bought in 2017 was ~$60k or ~$73k in today's dollars. If it's now $80k then that's a real price increase of ~$7k in today's dollars.
That's certainly an increase, but making an expensive car slightly more expensive doesn't seem particularly insane to me.
Inflation is a huge factor here for sure.
Most people probably can't get their heads around a well equipped Toyota Corolla approaching $30k or Honda Accord hitting $40k. Mentally to me these are BMW 3-series prices, but that's not been true for some time!
If you are in the market for a 3-row / 7 seater, you can spend $55k on a Toyota Highlander SUV or $40k on a Toyota Siena minivan.
It's genuinely pretty challenging to spend under $30k on a new car now outside fairly basic 2-4 door smaller sedan/hatchback vehicles in their base trim without options.
> outside fairly basic [...] vehicles in their base trim without options
Nothing wrong with basic vehicles "in their base trim without options", we have two parked outside the house right now, and the vehicle we owned before them was similar.
I am only trying to illustrate that the line between luxury/excess in autos has shifted substantially in the last few years partially inflation driven and partially cheap credit / long loan terms driven.
The universe of under-$30k cars is now quite limited whereas 5 years ago, one could possibly describe $30k+ as being luxury.
Hell, somehow my brain is still stuck in the 90s, where $30k would get you a very nice car indeed. I was a teenager then, so perhaps I'm anchored there because it's when I first started getting interested in things like that, and first started driving. (Gas was also 92 cents per gallon for a bit while I was in high school, oof.)
My family also always only bought used cars (and I continued this practice), so I guess that further skewed my conception of car cost downward. I only just bought my first new car recently, and I still haven't really adjusted to the reality of both what current prices are like, and how much more expensive a new car is.
I could have written the same comment and have mixed feelings about turning into the old person who feels that everything was cheaper "back in my day".
I try and remind myself that for the most part it's not that cars are that much more expensive but that dollars are worth so much less.
Franchise dealers typically stock few if any vehicles in their base trim without options. Those vehicles often exist only in token numbers so that the manufacturer can advertise a low starting price, but they're not readily available to most consumers. Of course that varies by brand.
> For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k range now.. insane.
For a shit car with the interior fit and finish of a poverty-spec Skoda, and all the important controls replaced with a bloody great iPad that blinds you at night.
Oh, and it's from an obscenely "techbro" company.
Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas?
> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas?
I am very impressed by their batteries and I like the look of the Model S but I'm utterly unimpressed by the build quality of the interior and the cheap materials used.
At that price I'd except to be entering a comfortable car using luxurious materials.
FWIW I tried the Porsche Taycan and the interior is leaps and bound ahead of the Teslas (but the batteries aren't up to par yet and the software ain't either I think).
Look at really any of the competition at the Model S price level from the Germans and the interior is spectacular. Honestly the battery range on the Germans is also better than you realize.
Tesla exaggerates their range and few actually achieve the quoted EPA range, so you can deduct 10-15% for real world.
The Germans, especially Porsche undersell their range and real world you can get about 10-15% longer out of the BMWs & MBs and something insane like 35% more out of the Taycans.
> Am I the only one not impressed in any sense by Teslas
I could excuse the drawbacks you cited and the cost if they were the Framework laptop of the automotive world. But at those price points, and a repairability narrative that is not much better than, “out of warranty and one accident away from into landfill”, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’ll buy a Tesla.
> repairability narrative that is not much better than, “out of warranty and one accident away from into landfill”
I have a couple of old Range Rovers. There are very few things you can't fix with a half-inch spanner and a hammer, and those you can fix with a 7/16th spanner and a bit of sticky tape.
They run on propane, so they get cheap tax and can be registered as Low Emission Vehicles, which is pretty hilarious for a 4-litre V8.
Combined they probably still have a smaller ecological footprint than making one Tesla Model S.
How does fueling work? Perhaps I just haven't noticed (because I have to reason to), but I have never seen a fueling station advertise propane, outside of tanks for grilling and similar.
Big doughnut-shaped tank in the spare wheel well, bit of plumbing to the front (copper in old installs, plastic on newer ones - my "old" Rangie has plastic pipe because I refurbed it about seven years ago), and a thing like a diving regulator that lets the engine "suck" gas through after boiling it off using engine coolant, and feeds it into the throttle body. More sophisticated ones use solenoid injectors that work alongside the normal petrol injectors and provide a more "direct" flow of fuel and better performance. On my oldschool install there's a stepper motor that adjusts the fuelling based on what it reads from the existing lambda sensors. When you switch to gas, a pair of modules (four cylinders each so a V8 needs two) switch some resistors in series with the petrol injectors so they cannot fire but the ECU still sees continuity, cutting off the petrol, and the gas solenoids switch on allowing propane through.
To fuel up you just go to a filling station with an LPG pump (getting harder to find here unfortunately) and instead of poking the nozzle down the filler neck and holding down a trigger on the filler gun, you plug in a hose with a fitting like a BNC plug the size of your wrist and hold down a button on the pump until you've put enough in. It clicks off when it's full.
No difference in performance (in theory you could adjust it to get more because it's the equivalent of 115RON fuel!) and a bit more fuel consumption, but roughly 2/3 the price of petrol.
LPG (liquified propane gas) stations are slowly on the wane but still common enough for practical use in Germany.
Common enough and cheap enough that I still feel a bit prescient for buying a 2017 Ford Focus wagon with about 30k km on the clock that was factory modified for LPG, in August 2021, for about half what the original owner paid.
I'm impressed in the sense that Tesla has done amazing things with battery technology, and has made EVs "cool". It's sometimes easy to forget, but before Tesla, EVs were ugly and nobody wanted them.
But yeah, whenever I'm in a Tesla, the interior looks cheap, and the giant iPad (in the Model 3 at least) looks bolted-on rather than designed-in. Not to mention the real-time display of what's around the car is laughably bad, with cars and pedestrians flickering in and out, and sometimes not even showing up at all.
I'm glad people drive them, though; more EVs on the street is a good thing.
No, you're not alone, but they still have a cachet in a certain crowd (the "green" and "forward-thinking" types love them). Hopefully it goes away soon.
i dunno my parents fit in that category and told me they will not consider a Tesla as long as it’s associated with Musk. EVs of other companies are really quite nice these days so i don’t think they are losing anything. Right now that have a new plugin hybrid RAV4.
Not to mention a fully specced out Tesla Model 3 is $80k and Model Y is now.. $90k, and the tax credits are basically gone! I remember getting a pretty well configured Model 3 for $50k after tax incentives in their first year of production.
For ~$70k you used to be able to get a Model S, which now STARTS at $105k. Easily configurable into the $130-160k range now.. insane.